"Hi Brennan" (A Eulogy to my Grandma)

"May I buy a vowel please?"

"Uh, well, yes, there's three of those!"

Ding, Ding, Ding!

I remember these sounds,

and your smile, eyes glittering with joy,

watching wheel of fortune on a high school night with me,

wondering how you always knew the answers

without looking at the T.V., knitting non-stop

needles singing and shimmying against each other.

I remember your Simmy and Sammy bed-time stories,

how they fed my imagination with imaginary worlds,

and how I could never recall the last few words of each night's story,

because the touch of your hand on my shoulder

was enough to lull me to peaceful sleep.

I remember the smell of your duppa,

the comedy of colors on everyone's Christmas sweaters,

the crackling of wrapping paper,

the kids' bug-eyed looks of anticipation...

Then a frigid train ride to Chicago Christmas tree awe,

and the sugar cookies I stole from your kitchen, warm and soft from the oven.

A smile instead of a frown, milk instead of a "no."

I know of your ceaseless love of God

and the sad joy you carried in your heart of Carl's passing.

Or the faith you had to keep your family safe during partition,

and the shake of your head when your two silly boys would sled down the hills of Murray.

I remember you pinching me when my dad preached,

(with a smile of course, that famous Davis smile)

and how a yummy lemon drop would fall into my palm

for every part of the service I could keep still through.

I remember your Bonneville SS,

and its fresh leather smell, terrible power and unquenchable speed.

"Do you need me to drive you anywhere today Gram?" (wink wink)

I remember the smell of your Park Circle hallways

how it felt like home to run to your door,

how it felt like home to see your smile spread ear to ear,

how I have never seen you unhappy,

how you have never for a moment stopped loving me,

your Peanut.

Go in peace grandma, and tell grandpa you're home.

I love you.

Iceberg Storm (Sketch)

Between ash-gray clouds and rain like a wet sheet of sadness are tiny puffs of clouds. Hooked to an angry iceberg, they sway, swish and slash across the sky in terrible fascination at the trap laid for them long before the dawn awoke and retreated hurriedly at the sight of the ashen horizon. I am fascinated to how one thing hooked to another allows no movement, freedom or exit. Yet they are together, perched halfway between the sky and ocean's floor, floating somnambulists to a sea's rhythm and rhyme.

The root of the vein (A dream)

It was stunningly clear to me. I had awakened within my dream as a man halfway buried in dark, damp, moss strewn soil. I could not feel my legs. I could not feel if I had toes, nor understand where our instinctual human urge to bend legs and sprint down a hard dirt-packed path had gone. My chest was bare, a single enormous muscle carved down the middle, ending in the dirt that started at my torso. I was breathing heavily, and tufts of grass came puffing out every time I wheezed or coughed with lungs filled with lichens. I was screaming but there was no sound. I looked down at my arms, heavily etched in sinuous muscle, and saw they were a dark caramel brown mixed with rock gray. Branches, twigs and vines began growing just around where my fingers should have been, and curved in lovely arcs out over the forest floor, twisting, growing and wrapping themselves around other trees. My entire hands were a tangled mess of vines, choking one another as they wrapped and wriggled towards a sunless freedom. I looked up at the canopy, still silently screaming, and shoved my "hands" deep into the earth in order to free myself. Instead of lurching upwards and out, I felt my hands quickly entrench themselves deeply within the mossy floor, and I began sinking quickly. It was then I felt the tree growing out of my head and I awoke.

A Zipper Moon (Sketches)

West Coast Blur & Whir (Sketch)

Mindwarp in Ballpoint

Rainbow minnows and piranha bites (A dream)

Setting: Friends, family and former class students at an outdoor seaside garden party...hours before I had been trapped in a building with laughter in the background - when I finally got out I was running down stairs and saw some former students of mine coked out on the stairs staring at me as if they knew they were lost but couldn't ask for help - sprinted past them and ran out to the garden party where everyone wandered around alive, but not. They looked at me yet couldn't ask me anything, their eyes pleading for help. I ran around shoving and jostling friends and parents though they could do nothing but fall or stumble to the ground as I touched them...at this point I felt strength as superman fill me, cliché as it might sound, and ran to the water, wondering if the dark waters held an answer as to unlocking my friends' dilemma. Swimming deeply I began to see swirling movements in different areas and approached one of these areas carefully, seeing rainbow colors mix and swim into each other so quickly it appeared an artist was blurring paints on a palette. Reaching out with my hand, I felt individual fish whirling in a ball, and suddenly saw one latch it's teeth on my index finger. I should have wailed in pain though knew I was immune to this piranha-esque minnow. I took ahold of its head and squeezed it hard enough to crush and powder bone, yet it accomplished nothing. Releasing it back to its bait-ball of color, I realized the bait-balls were in certain shapes and spaced apart from each other as if with some hidden design in mind. I flew straight up out of the water and climbed a few hundred meters over the sea. Gasping in fear I saw the fish were all in the shapes of the buttons on a PS3 gaming hand controller, and were blinking in a sequence, indictating a game was being played. Soaring higher I could see hundreds perhaps tens of thousands of these "controllers" being used and it dawned on me that my friends were being masterminded...except by who? Moments later I was back on shore after acquiring one of the minnows, a purple pink blue combo of scales flashing in anger, and definitely not dying from being out of water. The abject fear in my friends' eyes grew noticeably greater when they saw the fish; I took a knife chopped it in ten pieces, placed the pieces in a bucket and lit it on fire. Within I heard the same laughter from earlier in my dream, and moments later a voice like sand and salt being rubbed against each other spoke to me. "We are millions and you are one. You will fail." I placed my hand in the fire and screamed. Then I awoke.